With more than 300 million members worldwide, LinkedIn has become the world’s largest online business networking site. South Africa has more than 3 million LinkedIn members, making it the 10th largest LinkedIn country community in the world.
LinkedIn is no longer just a tool for job searching; LinkedIn has become the premier social media site in online revenue generation and reputation management. Unlike Facebook and Twitter, LinkedIn is strictly for business, and has become the “secret weapon” for business-to-business activities such as:
• replacing cold calling;
• generating new leads;
• finding a decision maker;
• accelerating the sales cycle and
• connecting with C-level individuals (Chief Executive Officers, Chief Financial Officers, Chief Information Officers, Chief Operating Officers)
With such an expansive database at your disposal, how can you use this tool to your advantage?
1. Optimise your personal profile
Prospects will look at your profile before they want connect or meet with you. It is imperative that you create a customer friendly profile, focusing on the business value you provide to your clients.
Make sure that you have a clear and professional photo of yourself. Also make sure that your headline is compelling and catchy by summarising your value proposition. You have 120 characters to do this.
The rest of your profile tells your complete story. Instead of using a resume format, highlight how you have helped your clients and the results you have achieved. You can upload presentations, short video sessions with your clients and publications that may be of interest to new and potential clients.
Yes, your LinkedIn profile must read like a bestseller!
2. Build your ideal prospect profile
Take a moment to think through whom exactly it is that you want to target. Which industries would you like to target, both geographically and in terms of company size. If you work in the medical sector for instance, or construction in Cape Town, your ideal target may be a company with between 150 and 500 employees and the top three position titles for your ideal client would be the Chief Executive Officer, Chief Financial Officer or Human Resource Manager. Armed with this prospect profile, your LinkedIn marketing effort will be much more effective.
3. Build your prospect list
With your ideal prospect profile in mind, you can now use LinkedIn’s built-in Advanced Search function to search for your prospects. You can filter the niche you want to work with (medical, construction, IT etc); company size (revenue or number of employees); seniority (Managing Director etc); geographical area (Cape Town, Durban, Gauteng etc) or a specific company name.
The Premium version of LinkedIn includes even more criteria for fine-tuning your prospect list. You will get a prospect list that can span hundreds of contacts, from which you can refine your search, if necessary.
4. Connect with prospects
Once you have your prospect list, save it. In that way, when anyone changes their LinkedIn profile to meet your parameters, you are immediately notified. From the list, you can decide which individuals you want to target. View their profile page (remember, they are notified if you or anyone else views their profile) to ensure that they have the correct profile and position in the company.
Also look at what groups they belong to on their profile. Do not contact these prospects directly, but see if you have shared connections and if so, ask your connection permission to contact the prospect. If you do not have shared connections, join the same group(s). Once you are part of that group, search for them via the “member” function. You can also send a message to your connected prospect to get an appointment.
This is a new and exciting way to generate leads for your practice. Use it in a clever way and with sensitivity and you will be amazed at the results.